Encounters on the Shop Floor: Embodiment and the Knowledge of the Maker

Dr Marta Ajmar (Victoria &Albert Museum)

Professor Roger Kneebone (Imperial College, London)

Fleur Oakes (Independent artist)

This talk will present research from a five-year collaborative project co-led by Marta Ajmar and Roger Kneebone, supported by the V&A Research Institute (VARI) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It will consider the models of thinking and doing that emerge from 'encounters on the shop floor', where invention and innovation result from the exchange between different kinds and communities of 'knowledge-makers'. The significance of embodiment in the processes of cognition and learning will be explored, moving beyond an unhelpful divide between 'mind' and 'hand' and between 'intellectual' and 'manual' knowledge and their disciplinary and institutional compartmentalisation.

During this seminar we will present the project in conversation with textiles artist Fleur Oakes. Our speakers aim to connect different worlds and experiences of knowledge-making around a common nucleus of embodied practice, combining academic work with the scientific expertise of the surgeon and the craft of the artistic practitioner.